in the natural process of growth in the human mind belief does not follow proof but Springs up apart from and independent of it an immature intelligence believes first and proves if indeed it ever seeks proof afterwards in ancient Greece the Oracle at the Temple of Apollo in Deli pronounced Socrates the wisest of the Greeks Socrates took this as a proval of his agnosticism which was the starting point of his philosophy one thing only I know he said and that is that I know nothing puzzled by the priestess's statement Socrates felt obliged to seek the meaning of her remark Socrates set out to question others who had a reputation for wisdom or knowledge because he believed the gods were wise and there must be a reason he was called the wisest of the Greeks by the Priestess of Apollo he came to see that he was wiser than these wise men because unlike them he did not claim to know what he did not know Plato's dialogues profess to be depictions of Socrates in conversation from the dialogues we get the dialectical form known as the Socratic method the Socratic method is a form of Cooperative dialogue between individuals where asking and answering questions stimulates critical thinking and draws out ideas and their underlying presuppositions by eliminating faulty definitions or ones that lead to contradictions one can approach the truth and act more cautiously in its Pursuit what Plato tried to combat with his writings on Socrates was ignorance according to the English philosopher John Stewart Mill what Plato objected to was the tendency of people to view commonly held sentiments as ultimate truths it was the acceptance of traditional opinions and current sentiments as an ultimate fact and banding of the abstract terms which express approbation and disapprobation desire and aversion admiration and disgust as if they had a meaning thoroughly understood and universally ascented to the Socratic method is an activity not a system or set of beliefs Socrates sometimes defined an elusive concept by comparing it to its opposite according to Ward Farnsworth the author of the book the Socratic method a strong candidate for a one-word opposite of the Socratic method would be Twitter fanatical partisanship wishful thinking in place of Truth shaming of dissenters the censorship or self-censorship of dissenting views inability of people who disagree to talk let alone cooperate everyone sees all this on the rise and most thinking people fear and loath all that it involves and portends I believe that the Socratic method could put a stop to the madness infecting our public discourse the Socratic method is a natural corrective to the family of vices just mentioned instead instead of viewing it as a technique consider it a principle of patience inquiry humility and doubt in other words it amounts to the opposite of every attitude encouraged by social media and infecting our whole political and cultural life it means asking hard questions without fear and receiving them without offense indeed it means treating Challenge and reputation as acts of friendship political discourse is the most polarized it has been since the Civil War our Technologies for communication have made open and honest conversation more difficult especially on social media where quick judgments and overly emotional reactions are encouraged and even rewarded the Mind fed from those sources learns to subsist happily on quick reactions easy certainties onliners and rage it craves confirmation and resents contradiction attention spans collapse imbecility propagates then seems normal then is celebrated the capacity for rational discourse between people who disagree gradually rots the Socratic method is not just a way to have better conversations with others it can be used to uncover your own beliefs and the assumptions that underly them the practitioners of the Socratic method live by the dictum know thyself that was inscribed at the Temple of Apollo in Deli in 399 B see Socrates went on trial in Athens for impiety and corrupting the Youth of Athens Plato's dialogue the apology professes to be the speech made by Socrates in his own defense at his trial in the apology Socrates says the unexamined life is not worth living Socrates believed that living a life where you live under the rules of others in a continuous routine without examining what you actually want out of it is not a life that's worth living the ridiculous is in short the specific name which is used to describe the vicious form of a certain habit and Ace in general it is the kind which is most at variance with the inscription at Deli Socratic inquiry starts by posing a question about some belief or claim you are trying to discover what the claim means and look for any tension between the claim and what you already Believe by following through a claim you may find that the conclusion you reach is not something you would actually accept or that it is inconsistent with something else you believe we see a good example of this in one of the dialogues in Plato's dialogue the Lis we see Socrates having a conversation with two Athenian generals about the meaning of Courage one of the generals defines courage as a kind of wisdom or knowledge this definition is too broad so Socrates tries to narrow it down he asks if courage is a kind of knowledge then what is it knowledge about one of the generals named nishas proposed that a courageous person is one who understands what is worth fearing and what isn't but this definition of courage isn't satisfactory for Socrates either he says that if courage is knowledge of what's worth fearing then animals can't be courageous because they don't have this kind of knowledge if you are fearless that doesn't necessarily make you courageous Socrates asks if courage is just one kind of virtue as opposed to say showing self-control or being just nichas says yes it's one kind of virtue Socrates then says if you understand whether something to come is worth fearing then you must also have knowledge of what was good or evil in the past judgments about whether something is good or bad shouldn't depend on whether or not they already happened nichas agrees so courage amounts to an understanding of what's good or evil period nichas concurs with this but if this is true then people who have knowledge have more than courage since they understand the nature of what is good and evil they would also be just and Pious in fact they would have all of the virtues to which nichas agrees again but courage is only one kind of virtue and now with this definition it is every virtue along with absolute knowledge of Good and Evil Socrates not only shows the definition is inadequate he also shows it is inconsistent with something Nisha said earlier that courage is just one virtue the method itself is quite simple Ward Farnsworth describes a Socratic method like this when someone makes a claim about right and wrong or good and bad question it ask what the claim means and about other things its holder believes and look for tension between those points show with your questions that the claim must be in some way unsatisfactory to the person who made it in effect you deny what your discussion Partners say but the denial is Artful if you do this right it won't even sound like an argument they will refine their claims and now you do it again this can just as well be applied to question your own beliefs and this is what we will focus on in the rest of this video it is just as important that you question your own beliefs as it is to question someone else's questions in the socratic Spirit are to check for consistency in your statements and to find out what you really believe many times we make declarative statements without understanding what general principles underly these statements dissatisfaction with the answers you give yourself is a symptom of good health coming to rest means surrender to a kind of comfort that is always deceptive no matter how tempting it looks or deserved it feels the socratic way seeks a different kind of comfort with uncertainty with fallibility and with beliefs that are never more than provisional often people say things they don't actually believe that is if they thought longer about them the Socratic method is not just an antidote to the collapse of rational discourse in our society it is also a way to a better health of the Soul Socrates thinks of ideas as every bit as important more so indeed as what we can see in touch and he tries to get others to look at them that way too he wants people to care for their insides the psyche and soul with the kind of energy and attention they spend on their physical selves and whatever else they see caring for your soul is something that doesn't have a lot of value put on it in our culture education doesn't teach you how to think nor does society in fact we are constantly urged not to think and just react this is the worst kind of existence to someone like Socrates there's nothing worse than self-deception when the deceiver is always at home and always with you to begin a Socratic inquiry you first ask open-ended questions so that you can settle on an explanation once a position is taken then you bear down on the explanation and see if it holds up to scrutiny it's like a lawyer cross-examining a witness you attempt to approach a conclusion from different angles the more ways you can reach the same conclusion the more consistent it will be and the better thought out inquiry in the socratic way isn't just a check for consistency just because a set of beliefs appear to be consistent does not mean they are true to truly be awake you need to understand the set of assumptions presupposed behind your beliefs we can think of these as the latent beliefs that we are never really conscious of if we are not conscious of our beliefs we are not really awake in the sense Socrates tried to be finding the concepts behind judgments is important to understand understand in what we stand for because we judge with our Concepts people think they don't care about Concepts when in fact they fight and live and die by them but often they haven't taken the time to understand the concepts very well arguments can go on for a long time with the major premises on each side taken for granted and invisible to everyone every belief has an idea it is based on and before you can say you really understand something you need to know what these underlying ideas are first for example to call yourself a Christian suggest that you also believe in the Christian metaphysical system and everything it implies for how obvious this is many people still make this mistake many people call themselves atheists while accepting a Christian morality if you reject the Christian God that discredits the whole thing as n pointed out Christianity is a complete system it stands or Falls with the belief in God to truly be an ath aist you need to understand all its implications many of the platonic dialogues end in an impass because a principle being discussed is not understood enough to be defined Socrates wanted us to be cautious with what we go along with not to rush to a solution or outcome for Plato who wrote the socratic dialogues this was the most important lesson he wanted readers to take away from the dialogues to be a Socratic is not to follow any system of philosophical do it implies first and foremost an attitude of Mind an intellectual humility easily mistaken for arrogance since the true Socratic is convinced of the ignorance not only of himself but of all mankind we all need an internal Socrates to challenge our beliefs and to keep us awake this adversary within the self that questions and keeps you from getting comfortable with your convictions is what n referred to as an intellectual conscience for n it is not about having the courage to hold a certain conviction but rather to have the courage to attack your convictions to prove a conviction is quite senseless rather it is important to prove that one has a right to be so convinced what Plato shows with his dialogues on Socrates is that the search for truth never really ends the point here is not to reach any conclusions but learn more about how you think Socratic method is a correction for the bad habits of the mind when left to itself the Socratic method is a potent antidote against that particular form of stupidity which involves a love of holding opinions in this case the bad habit is the love of holding opinions it feels good to know what you think when people turn to philosophy they usually want more of that pleasure if not more of what they already think than something else to be sure about but in his View our most urgent problem is that we're certain when we shouldn't be and think we know what we don't the Socratic method doesn't replace your current opinions with better ones it changes your relationship to your opinions it replaces the love of holding them with the love of testing them the love of holding opinions is a fundamental problem plaguing our society today we are constantly tempted into the bad habit of making quick judgments and shunning those who think freely or hold different opinions the practitioner of the Socratic method thinks in questions is at home with uncertainty and knows how to value a search that doesn't end finally the reason why the Socratic method is so powerful for testing your own beliefs or those of others is because it is hard to argue when you are in contradiction with yourself if someone shows you that your views contradict certain facts you can doubt the evidence if someone shows that your views are in conflict lict with new information you might doubt the data when your beliefs are in conflict with each other it's uncomfortable in a more direct way you can't attack the author of the study Socrates views internal contradiction as a kind of moral contradiction the particular kind of illness that Socrates warned against and that is widespread in our society is the kind of ignorance which has conceit of knowledge social psychologist David Dunning and Justin Krueger discovered a cognitive bias in which people with low intelligence overestimate their abilities while people with higher intelligence tend to underestimate their ability this bias is called the Dunning Krueger effect to Socrates we all overestimate our knowledge so before real learning can take place we first need to be made humble about what we actually know as the physician considers that the body will receive no benefit from taking food until the internal obstacle have been removed so the purifier of the soul is conscious that his patient will receive no benefit from the application of knowledge until he is refuted and from reputation learns modesty he must be purged of his prejudices first and made to think that he knows only what he knows and no more the world needs a Socrates now just as much if not more than it did in ancient Greece because of Science and our technology we have come to exaggerate our understanding of the world around us but sometimes knowledge itself is a limitation an idea which Nicha was well aware of many philosophers end up becoming blinded by the systems they create it stops them from keeping an open mind and to keep searching for truth we are trying to find the final theory that will explain everything even though there might be no such thing n said there are two types of people in the world those who want to know and those who want to believe those who want to know value a search for truth that does not end and those who want to believe seek opinions they can hold unconditionally saurin kirkgard in his sickness unto death wrote it never occurs to anybody that what the world needs confused as it is by much knowing is a Socrates but that is perfectly natural for if anybody had this notion not to say if many were to have it there would be less need of a so es what a delusion most needs is the very thing it least thinks of naturally for otherwise it would not be a delusion